Karma

Schmidt Number: S-5610

On-line since: 31st January, 2019

II

Dornach, February 17, 1924

W

HEN we
advance from the study the aim of which was to prepare us
for the explanation of human destiny, of karma, when we advance
from abstractions, from the intellectual, to life itself,
this advance then brings us, first of all, to the point of
placing before our minds the various spheres of life into which
the human being is inserted, in order to gain from these
constituents of life a basis for a characterization of
karma, of human destiny.

Indeed, the human being belongs to the whole cosmos in a much
more comprehensive sense than is usually thought. He is,
indeed, a member of the cosmos, and without the cosmos he is
nothing. I have often employed the comparison of some human
bodily member, for example, a finger: A finger is a finger by
virtue of its being a part of the human organism. The moment it
is severed from the human organism it is no longer a finger.
Outwardly, physically, as finger it is the same as previously,
but after it has been severed from the human organism it is,
indeed, no longer a finger. In like manner is the human being
no longer a human being when he is lifted out of the general
cosmic existence. He belongs to the general cosmic existence,
and without it he cannot at all be looked upon, not at all be
comprehended as a human being.

As we
have already seen from yesterday's lecture, the world
surroundings of mankind consist of various domains. To
begin with, we have the lifeless domain of the world which, in
ordinary language, we call the domain of the mineral
world. We become similar to this domain of the mineral world as
the lifeless element only after we have laid aside our body,
when we, as far as this body is concerned, have passed through
the portal of death. In our real being we never become similar
to this lifeless element. The discarded bodily form alone
becomes similar to this element.

Thus,
we have on the one hand what the human being leaves behind as a
physical corpse in the realm of the lifeless, and, on the
other, what exists as the widespread lifeless, crystalline and
non-crystalline mineral nature and world. As human beings we
are entirely dissimilar to this mineral world as long as
we live upon the earth. To this I have already drawn attention.
In regard to our form, we are immediately destroyed when we are
consigned to the mineral world as a corpse. We disintegrate
into the mineral; that is, the element which holds our form
together has nothing in common with mineral nature. From this
it follows that the human being as he lives in the physical
world cannot be actually influenced at all by the mineral
nature itself.

The
chief and most comprehensive influences which act upon the
human being from the mineral kingdom come in a roundabout way
through the senses. We see the mineral kingdom, we hear it, we
perceive its warmth, briefly, we perceive it by means of the
senses. Our other relationships to the mineral nature are
extremely slight. Just consider how very little of a mineral
nature enters into relationship with us during earth life. The
salt with which we flavor our food is mineral, and a few other
things which we take in with our food are of a mineral nature,
but by far the largest part of the food stuff which the human
being consumes comes from the plant and animal kingdoms. And
what we receive from the mineral kingdom relates itself in a
very peculiar way to what we receive from the mineral world
through our senses simply as soul impressions, as sense
perceptions. And I beg you to consider seriously in this
connection something very important. I have, indeed, frequently
described this: The human brain weighs on the average about
1500 grams. This is quite a weight. The blood vessels at the
base of this brain would be completely crushed by it if they
were so heavily pressed upon by such a weight as this. But the
brain does not press so heavily, for it is subject to a certain
law. This law, which I have described here recently, says that
an object immersed in a liquid loses some of its weight.

This
can be shown by experiment, by taking a pair of scales —
first disregarding the liquid-filled vessel — weighing
this object and noting its weight. Then place the vessel
containing the water underneath one of the scale pans so that
the object in the scale pan sinks into the water.
Immediately the scale pans are no longer in balance. The
pan containing the weight drops lower, because the object in
the other pan becomes lighter. If you then investigate how much
lighter the object in question becomes, you will find that it
is lighter by an amount equal to the weight of the fluid which
the object displaces. If thus you take water as a fluid, then
will the weight of the body immersed be reduced by an amount
equal to the weight of the displaced water. This is the
so-called principle of Archimedes. He discovered this
— as I have told you on another occasion — when
taking a bath. By simply sitting in the bath he found that his
leg became lighter or heavier, according as he inserted it in
the water or lifted it out again. And he then cried: I have
found it! Eureka!

Indeed, my dear friends, what has just been said is an
extremely important fact; important facts, however, are
often forgotten. Had the engineering art not forgotten
this Archimedean principle, then in Italy perhaps one of
the greatest disasters of recent times would not have occurred.
These are just the things which occur also in outer life from
inability to survey clearly present-day knowledge.

In any
case, the body loses in weight an amount equal to the weight of
the displaced water. Now, the brain is completely immersed in
the cerebral fluid. It swims within this brain water. Once in a
while, at the present time, the human being comes to realize
that in so far as he is solid, he is actually a fish. In
reality he is, indeed, a fish, for 90% of his body consists of
water and the solid element swims within it like the fish in
water.

Thus,
the brain by swimming in the cerebral fluid becomes so much
lighter than formerly that it weighs only 20 grams. The brain
which out of its fluid weighs some 1500 grams, in its fluid
presses upon its base with a weight of only 20 grams. Now just
consider how strong in us is the tendency in such an important
organ — on account of this swimming of our brain in the
cerebral fluid — the tendency to become free from the
earth. We do not at all think with an organ which is subject to
the influence of gravity, but rather we think in
opposition to this force of gravity. The brain organ has first
been relieved of the force of gravity.

If you
consider the wide significance of the impressions which you
receive through the senses, and which you confront with your
free will, and compare this with the minute influences which
come from salt and similar substances absorbed as food or
seasoning, then the following will result from your
observation: So great is the predominance of our mere sense
impressions, which render us independent of the stimuli from
the mineral kingdom, that what we receive into ourselves as
direct influence from the mineral world is related to our sense
perceptions in the ratio of 20 to 1500 grams. What we take into
ourselves through the sense perceptions does not tear us
apart, and the elements in us which actually are subject to the
earth's gravity — such as the mineral seasonings in our
food are, for the most part, things that conserve us inwardly;
for salt has at the same time a conserving, a maintaining, a
refreshing force. The human being is thus, on the whole,
independent of what exists in the surrounding mineral kingdom.
He takes into himself from the mineral kingdom only that which
has no direct influence on his inner nature. He moves about
freely and independently in the mineral world.

My
dear friends, if this freedom and independence of movement in
the mineral world did not exist, what we call human freedom
would not exist at all. And it is very important that we must
acknowledge that the mineral kingdom actually exists as the
necessary counterpart of human freedom. Indeed, were there no
mineral kingdom, we would not be free beings. For the moment we
ascend into the plant kingdom, we are no longer independent of
that kingdom. It only seems as if we directed our eyes toward
the plant kingdom in just the same way we direct them toward
the crystal, toward the widespread mineral kingdom. That is,
however, not the case. Here, on the earth, the plant kingdom
lies outspread. And we human beings are born into the
world as breathing, living beings, as beings having a certain
metabolism. All this is, indeed, much more dependent on the
environment than our eyes, our ears, than everything that
is a transmitter of sense impressions. What exists as plant
world, the outspread plant world, draws its life out of the
strength-giving ether pouring from all sides downward into the
earth. The human being also is subject to this ether.

When
we are born as a little child and begin to grow, when the
forces of growth are evident in us, these are the ether forces.
The same forces which cause the plants to grow live in us as
ether forces. We carry within us the ether body. The physical
body harbors our eyes, harbors our ears. As I have just
explained, this body has nothing in common with the rest of the
physical world, and what shows this to be true is the fact
that, as a corpse, it decays in the physical world.

In the
case of the ether body we have at once a different condition.
Through this ether body we are related to the plant kingdom.
But by our growing — just consider this, my dear friends
— by virtue of our growing, something forms itself within
us which has a deep connection, in a certain sense, with our
destiny. To employ some rather grotesque, radical
illustrations, we may grow and yet remain small and fat,
or become tall and slim; we may grow and have this or that
shape of nose. In brief, the way we grow has most decidedly a
certain influence upon our external appearance. This,
again, is connected — although in the first place only
loosely — with our destiny. Growth does not express
itself, however, only in these coarser things. Were the
instruments we possess for purposes of research fine enough, we
should discover that actually every human being has a different
liver composition, a different spleen composition, a different
brain composition. Liver is not merely liver. In every
individual — naturally, in a very delicate way — it
is something different. All this is connected with the same
forces which cause the plants to grow. And in beholding the
plant cover of the earth we must become conscious of the fact
that what pours in out of the reaches of the ether, causing the
plants to grow, works and acts also in us; it produces in us
the original human potentiality which has a great deal to do
with our destiny. For whether a person has received this
or that liver, lung, or brain composition from the etheric
universe is a matter profoundly connected with his destiny.

We see
only the outer side, to be sure, of all these things.
Certainly, if we look upon the mineral kingdom, we see about
all that exists in that world. Human beings are so fond,
scientifically, of this mineral world — if it is at all
possible to speak of a “scientific fondness” at the
present time — because it contains everything that people
wish to find.

This
is certainly not the case with what sustains, as forces, the
plant kingdom. For the moment we attain imaginative knowledge
— I have already spoken of this on other occasions
— we begin immediately to see that the minerals are of
such a nature that they are enclosed in the mineral kingdom.
What sustains the plant kingdom does not appear externally at
all to ordinary consciousness. Here we must penetrate deeper
into the world.

Suppose we ask the question: What is it really that acts in the
plant kingdom? What acts there so that there can come from the
distant ether reaches the forces which make the plants sprout
and spring forth from the earth, which also cause our growth,
however, and the finer composition of our whole body, —
what acts there? This question then brings us to the beings of
the so-called third Hierarchy, the Angeloi, Archangeloi, and
Archai. These beings are the realm of the invisible; but
without them there would be no up and down surging of the ether
forces which cause the plants to grow, and which act in us
through our having within us the same forces that cause growth
in plants. We can no longer stop at the mere visible —
unless we wish to remain dull in regard to knowledge — if
we approach the plant world and its forces. And we must,
indeed, become conscious of the fact that in the body-free
existence between death and a new birth we develop our
relationships, our connections with these beings, the Angeloi,
Archangeloi, and Archai. And according to the way we
develop these connections and relationships with these
beings of the third

Hierarchy, does the karma of our inner nature — if I may
designate it thus — fashion itself, that very karma which
depends upon the way our ether body combines the bodily fluids,
how it causes us to be tall or short, and so forth.

But
here the beings of the third Hierarchy have only limited power.
The ability of plants to grow does not originate from their
power alone, for in this respect, these beings of the third
Hierarchy — the Angeloi, Archangeloi, and Archai —
stand in the service of yet higher beings. What we live
through, however, before we descend out of the spiritual world
into our physical body, what is connected with our more
delicate bodily structure, and all that I have just described,
all this is caused by our conscious encounter with these beings
of the third Hierarchy. And under this instruction which we can
receive from them, in accordance with our preparation in our
previous earth life, that is, as a result of the instruction we
receive for fashioning our ether body out of the forces of the
ether reaches, all this occurs during the last pre-birth
period, just before we descend from the super-physical into
physical existence.

From
the foregoing it is evident that our glance must first fall
upon what works into our destiny, into our karma out of our
inner constitution. For this aspect of karma, I should like to
employ the expressions “comfort and discomfort in
life.” Well-being, comfort, and discomfort in life are
connected with what is our inner quality by virtue of our ether
body.

A
second element which lives in our karma depends upon the fact
that the earth is not only covered by the plant kingdom but is
inhabited by the animal kingdom. Now just consider, my dear
friends, that the different regions of the earth have the
most varied animals. The animal atmosphere in the different
regions of the earth varies greatly.

You
will, however, admit that the human being also lives in this
atmosphere in which the animals live. That sounds grotesque at
the present time, because human beings are not accustomed
to consider such matters. There are, for example, regions where
the elephant lives. Indeed, in the regions where the elephant
lives the cosmos affects the earth in such a way as to make it
possible for the elephant to come into being. Indeed, do you
believe, my dear friends, that, if there is a portion of the
earth upon which the elephant lives, with the elephant-forming
forces working down upon it from the cosmos, the same forces
are not working, if right at this same spot a human being is
present? Of course, these forces are there also when a human
being is present. And this is likewise just as true for the
whole animal kingdom. In exactly the same way that the
plant-forming forces from the ether reaches are present right
here where we live — the walls of wood, stone, and even
concrete do not hold them back; here in Dornach, we live more
or less in the midst of the very forces that fashion the plants
in the Jura Alps — so likewise, if a human being lives on
the very soil where the elephant can exist according to the
earth's constitution, does he live under the
elephant-forming forces.

Figure II

I can,
indeed, quite well imagine that you now have before your mind's
eye many a large and small animal which inhabits the earth, and
you now learn that the human being, indeed, lives in the same
atmosphere as these animals. All this actually works upon the
human being. Naturally, it acts upon the human being
differently from the way it acts upon the animals, because the
human being has yet other qualities, yet other members of his
being than the animals. It acts differently upon the human
being; otherwise he would also become an elephant in the
elephant sphere. He does not, however, become an elephant.
Moreover, the human being lifts himself continually out of what
works upon him there. Yet he lives in this atmosphere.

You
see, everything that exists in the astral body of the human
being is dependent upon this atmosphere in which he lives. And,
if we may say that his well-being or discomfort is dependent
upon the plant nature of the earth, so may we again say that
the sympathies and antipathies which we, as man, develop within
our earth existence, and which we bring with us from
pre-earthly existence, depend on what constitutes, so to speak,
the animal atmosphere.

The
elephant has a trunk and thick, column-shaped legs. The stag
has antlers, and so on. In these members live the
animal-forming, the animal-shaping forces. In the human being
these forces are manifest only in their effect upon his astral
body. And in this effect upon his astral body they produce the
sympathies and antipathies which the human individuality
brings with him out of the spiritual world.

Just
observe, my dear friends, these sympathies and antipathies.
Observe what a strong dominant power these sympathies and
antipathies have throughout the whole of life. Certainly, we
human beings are taught, with justification in a certain
respect, to rise above these strong sympathies and
antipathies. Nevertheless, to begin with they still exist
— these sympathies and antipathies; we still go through
our lives living in sympathies and antipathies. One has
sympathy for this and another for that. One has sympathy for
sculpture, another for music; one has sympathy for blondes,
another for brunettes. These are strong, radical sympathies.
But our entire life is interwoven by such sympathies and
antipathies. We live in dependence upon those forces which
produce the manifold animal configurations.

And
now, just ask yourselves, my dear friends, what then do we as
human beings bear within us which corresponds within our own
innermost being to the manifold animal shapes existing in outer
nature? A hundredfold, a thousandfold are the animal
shapes. A hundredfold, a thousandfold are the configurations of
our sympathies and antipathies; only, most of them remain in
the unconscious or in the subconscious.

This
is an additional, a third, world.

The
first world was the world upon which we really feel no
dependence — the mineral world. The second world is
the one in which Angeloi, Archangeloi, and Archai live, the one
which causes the plant kingdom to sprout forth, which gives us
our inner quality by means of which we carry well-being and
discomfort into life, by means of which we feel desperately
unhappy through ourselves or feel happy through ourselves. That
which signifies our destiny through our inner composition,
through our entire etheric humanness, is taken out of this
second world. We now come to what further profoundly conditions
our destiny, — that is, our sympathies and antipathies.
And these sympathies and antipathies bring us, finally, what
belongs to our destiny in a far wider scope than do merely
these sympathies and antipathies themselves.

The
one human being is carried by his sympathies and antipathies
into far distances. He lives here and there, because his
sympathies have borne him thither, and in these distant reaches
the details of his destiny develop. Deeply linked to our whole
human destiny are these sympathies and antipathies. They live
in the world in which lives not the third Hierarchy, but the
second Hierarchy — the Exusiai, the Dynamis, the
Kyriotetes. That which is an earthly reflection of the sublime,
glorious forms of this second Hierarchy lives in the animal
kingdom. That, however, which these beings transplant
into us during our intercourse with them between death and a
new birth we bring with us out of the spiritual into the
physical world as our inborn sympathies and antipathies.

If we
fathom these matters, then such concepts as those of ordinary
heredity become childish, really childish. For in order that I
may possess some inherited trait from my father or mother, I
must first develop the sympathy or antipathy for this trait of
my father or mother. Thus, it does not depend merely upon the
fact that I have inherited these qualities through some sort of
lifeless nature-cause, but it depends upon whether I have had
any sympathy for these qualities. The reason why I have had
such sympathies for these qualities will be discussed in the
subsequent lectures. Our discussions about karma will, indeed,
occupy us for many hours to come. It is, however, really
childish to speak about heredity in the way this usually occurs
today in those scientific circles which consider themselves
especially clever.

It is
even asserted today that specifically soul-spirit
characteristics are inherited. Genius is said to be inherited
from the forebears, and when a genius appears in the world, we
seek out the individual traits in the forebears which, when
united in some personality, are supposed to produce this
genius. Indeed, that is a strange kind of demonstration of the
truth. A reasonable proof would be that, if a genius exists he
would then, through heredity, again produce another genius.
But, if we were to look for these proofs — well, Goethe
also had a son, and other geniuses have had sons we would come
upon curious things. That would be a proof! But the fact that a
genius exists and that certain characteristics of his forebears
are found in this genius has no more significance than that I
am wet if I fall into the water and am pulled out. Through this
event, I have very little to do in my own nature with the water
which then drips from me. Naturally, since I am born into
a certain hereditary stream, because of my sympathies with the
qualities in question, I am vested with these inherited
qualities just as, when I have fallen into the water, I carry
some of this water on my body after having been pulled out of
it. Grotesquely childish, however, are the ideas which people
have in this regard. For the sympathies and antipathies
have already appeared in the pre-earthly existence of the human
being, and these give him his innermost structure. With these
he enters into earth existence: with these he frames his
destiny for himself out of his pre-earthly existence.

And we
can now easily imagine the following: In a previous earth life,
we were associated with a human being. Much has resulted from
this association, which continues on in the life between death
and a new birth. Under the influence of the forces of the
higher Hierarchies, there is fashioned within the living
thoughts, within the living cosmic impulses, all that which is
then to pass over into the next earth life out of the
experience of the previous one, in order to be lived further.
For that purpose, we employ sympathies and antipathies,
cultivating the impulses through which we find each other in
life.

And
these sympathies and antipathies are shaped under the influence
of the Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes in the life between death
and a new birth. These sympathies and antipathies enable us
then to find the human beings in life with whom we must
continue to live, in accordance with the previous earth lives.
This is fashioned out of our inner human structure.

Naturally, in this acquiring of sympathies and antipathies the
most manifold errors occur. These, however, are equalized again
in the course of destiny throughout many earth lives. Thus, we
have here a second constituent of karma: the sympathies
and antipathies.

We may
say: First constituent of karma — inner comfort, or
discomfort; second constituent — sympathies and
antipathies (see
tabulation pages 26, 27).
By virtue of our
having reached the sympathies and antipathies in human destiny
we have ascended into the sphere in which lie the forces for
the formation of the animal kingdom.

Now we
ascend into the real kingdom of man. We live not only in
association with the plant kingdom, with the animal kingdom,
but we live quite determinatively for our fate in association
with other human beings in the world. That is quite a different
association from the association with plants and animals.
It is an association through which the chief element of our
destiny is fashioned. The impulses which cause the peopling of
the earth also with human beings act only upon mankind. And now
the question arises: Which are the impulses that act only upon
mankind? Here we can permit a purely external consideration to
speak which I have already frequently presented.

Our
life is, indeed, directed from its yonder side — if I may
so express myself — with a much greater wisdom than we
direct it here from this side.

We
often meet in our later years someone who is extraordinarily
important for our life. If we think back and see how we
have lived up to the time when we met this human being, our
whole life then appears to us to be the path we have taken in
order to encounter him. It is as if we had ordered every step
so as to find this individual exactly at the right point of
time, or at least to find him at a certain point of time.

We
need only, for once, ponder upon the following: Just think
what, with full human awareness, it signifies, to find in some
year of one's life a certain person and henceforward to
experience something in common with him, to work and
collaborate with him. Just consider what this means. Let us
consider in full awareness what it is that offers itself as the
impulse which has led us to meet this person. If we ponder upon
the matter and ask ourselves how it is that we have found this
person, perhaps it will then occur to us that an event had
first to be experienced by us which was connected with many
other people; otherwise there would not have* been the least
possibility of finding this human being during life. And in
order that this event might occur, another had in turn to be
experienced. We arrive at complicated relationships all of
which had to take place and into which we had to enter in order
to have some decisive experience. And then we ponder, perhaps,
upon the following: If at a certain age — I will not say
at the age of one, but of fourteen — we had been put to
the task of solving consciously the problem how we should, in
the fiftieth year of our life, bring about a decisive meeting
with some person, if we imagine that at a certain age we should
have had to solve this problem consciously like a problem in
arithmetic, I beg you just to consider what all of that would
require! We human beings are, indeed, consciously extremely
stupid, and what happens with us in the world is, if we
consider such things, extremely clever and wise!

If we
consider such a thing, our attention is directed to the extreme
intricacy and significance of our destiny's working, of the
action of our karma. And all this occurs in the realm of the
human being.

Now, I
beg you to consider that what takes place here with us is
actually living in the unconscious. Right up to the moment when
a critical event confronts us, it lies in the unconscious.
Everything takes place as though subject to the laws of nature.
But where would the laws of nature ever have the power to
effect such a thing? What occurs in this region can, indeed,
contradict all nature laws and everything that we construct in
accordance with the outer laws of nature. I have repeatedly
drawn your attention also to this fact.

The
externalities of human life may even be stretched into the
frame of calculated laws. Let us take, for example, the
business of life insurance. It can only prosper through our
being able to calculate the probable life duration of any
— let us say — nineteen or twenty-year-old
individual. When someone wishes to insure his life, the policy
is based upon the probable length of life. That is, as a
person, nineteen years old today, we are expected to live
according to these calculations a certain number of years. That
can be determined. But just suppose that this period has
elapsed. You would not feel in duty bound to die because of
this fact. According to this probable life duration, two human
beings should have been dead for a long time. But, after they
have long been “dead,” according to this probable
duration of life, they meet each other for the first time in
the way I have described! All this occurs beyond what we
calculate for human life out of the external facts of nature.
And nevertheless, it occurs with as much inner necessity as do
the laws of nature. It is not possible to say anything but the
following: With the same necessity with which any natural
phenomenon takes place, an earthquake, or a volcanic eruption,
or whatever it may be, a minor or a major event in nature, with
the same necessity two human beings meet each other during
earth life according to the rules of life which they have made
for themselves. Thus, we see actually here within the physical
realm a new realm established, and within this realm we live
not only in comfort or discomfort, in sympathies and
antipathies, but we live within it as in our own occurrences,
our own experiences. We are entirely molded into the
realm of events, of experiences which determine our life in
accordance with destiny.

In
this realm the beings of the first Hierarchy are active, the
Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones. For, in order that every human
step, every movement of the soul, everything in us may be
guided in the world in such a way that the destiny of man may
grow from it, a greater power is needed than that which acts in
the plant kingdom, than that possessed by the Hierarchy of the
Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, than that possessed by the
Hierarchy of the Exusiai, Kyriotetes, Dynamis. To achieve this
a power is needed which is inherent in the first Hierarchy,
Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones — the most exalted beings of
the universe. Now, what comes to manifestation there lives in
our real ego, in our ego organism, and extends its life from a
previous earth existence into a later one.

Archai, Archangeloi, Angeloi:

First Constituent of Karma — Comfort,
Discomfort.

Dynamis, Exusiai, Kyriotetes:

Second Constituent of Karma — Sympathies,
Antipathies.

Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones:

Third Constituent of Karma — Events,
Experiences.

And
now consider the following: You live a life on earth, causing
this or that, out of instincts, passions, inclinations, let us
say, or out of clever or foolish thoughts. All this is actually
present within you as impulses. Consider that, when you live a
life on earth, what you do through instincts leads to this or
to that; it leads to the happiness or injury of another human
being. Then you pass through the life between death and a new
birth. In this life you have the strong consciousness:
“If I have injured another human being, I am less perfect
than I should have been had I not thus injured him. I must
atone for it.” You feel in yourself the urge and the
impulse to expiate this injury. If you have done something to a
human being which advances him, then you behold what is
advancing him in such a way that you say: “This must
serve as the basis for general world advancement, this
must lead to further results in the world.”

All
this you are able to develop inwardly; all this may give
well-being, ease, or discomfort, according to the way you
fashion the inner nature of your body during life between death
and a new birth. All this may lead you to sympathies and
antipathies, in that you construct your astral body in the
corresponding way with the help of the beings of the second
Hierarchy, the Exusiai, Dynamis, and Kyriotetes. But all
of this does not yet give you the power to cause what in a past
life were mere human deeds to become a cosmic act. You advanced
or injured a human being. The effect of this must be that this
human being will encounter you in the next life and that you
will find through this encounter the impulse to expiate
the effect. What has a merely moral significance must become an
outer fact, must become an outer world event.

For
this purpose, the beings are needed who transform,
metamorphose, moral acts into world deeds. These are the beings
of the first Hierarchy, Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones. These
beings transform what proceeds from us in one earth life into
our experiences of the next earth lives. They act in what
constitutes event and experience in human life.

We
have there the three basic elements in our karma; that which
composes our inner constitution, our inner human existence, is
under the control of the third Hierarchy; that which exists as
our sympathies and antipathies, that which in a certain way
becomes our environment, is the concern of the second
Hierarchy; finally, that which confronts us as our outer life
is the concern of the first, the most exalted Hierarchy of
beings ranging above men.

Thus,
we look into the relationship in which the human being stands
to the universe, and come now to the important question: How do
all the details of our destiny develop from these three
elements of the human being?

The
human being is born into a parental home. He is born on a
certain spot of the earth. He is born within a folk. He
is born into a certain complex of facts. Everything, however,
that appears by virtue of his being born into a parental home,
of his being entrusted to educators, of his being born into a
folk, of his being placed upon a certain spot on the earth at
his birth, — all of this which, in spite of all human
freedom, intervenes so profoundly, so fatefully in the life of
the human being, all of this is finally, in some way, dependent
upon these three elements which compose human destiny.

All
individual questions will disclose themselves to us in
corresponding answers, if we focus our attention upon
these fundamentals in the right way. If we ask why someone in
his twenty-fifth year has small pox, thus passing through the
most extreme danger of life, if we ask why some other sickness
or event may intervene in his life, why his life may be
benefited by this or that older person, by this or that nation,
or why advancement occurs to him through this or that outer
event, — in every case we shall have to return to that
which, in a threefold manner, composes human destiny and places
the human being in the totality of the cosmic
Hierarchies. In the mineral kingdom alone does the human
being move about freely. There lies the realm of his
freedom.

By
paying attention to this, the human being learns also to pose
in the right way the question of freedom. Read in my
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity
how much I have
stressed the importance of not asking about the freedom of the
will. The will resides deep down in the unconscious, and it is
nonsense to ask about the freedom of the will; on the contrary,
it is possible to speak only of the freedom of thinking, of
thought. In my
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity
I have clearly made this distinction. Free thoughts must
activate the will, then is the human being free. But with his
thoughts the human being lives in the mineral kingdom. With
everything else, with his life in the world of the plant,
of the animal, in the purely human world, he is subject to
destiny. And freedom is something of which one may say the
following: The human being steps out of the realms which are
ruled by the higher Hierarchies into the realm which, in a
certain way, is independent of the higher Hierarchies, into the
mineral kingdom, in order to be free as far as he is concerned.
This mineral kingdom is, indeed, the realm to which the
human being becomes similar only as a corpse, when he has laid
his body aside after having passed through the portal of death.
The human being is independent in his earth life of that
kingdom which can only act for his destruction. It is not to be
wondered at that he is free in this kingdom, since this
kingdom has no other part in him but to destroy him when it
receives him. He must first die in order that he be, as a
corpse, in the realm in which he is free also as a phenomenon
of nature. Thus, things are related.

We
grow older and older. If the other incidents do not occur which
we shall also learn about in connection with karma, if the
human being dies at an advanced age, he becomes similar, as a
corpse, to the mineral kingdom. He enters the sphere of the
lifeless by growing older. Then he detaches his corpse from
himself. That is no longer human; naturally, it is no longer
human. Let us contemplate the mineral kingdom: that is no
longer God. Just as the corpse is no longer human, is the
mineral kingdom no longer God. What is it, then? The Godhead is
in the plant, animal, and human kingdoms; we have found it
there in its three Hierarchies. The Godhead is in the mineral
kingdom just as little as the human corpse is the human being.
The mineral kingdom is the divine corpse. To be sure, we shall
encounter in due course the peculiar fact, upon which today I
desire only to touch, that the human being grows older in order
to become a corpse and the Gods grow younger in order to become
a corpse. That is to say, the Gods travel on that other path on
which we travel after our death. The mineral kingdom is,
therefore, the youngest kingdom. It is, nevertheless, the one
that the Gods detach from themselves. And because it is
detached from the Gods, the human being can live within it as
in the realm of his freedom. Thus, are these things
interrelated. And the human being learns actually to feel more
and more at home in the world by his learning in this way to
place his sensations, his thoughts, his feelings, his will
impulses in the right relationship to the world. But only thus
do we see also how, in accordance with the laws of destiny, we
are placed in the world and in relationship to other human
beings.